One forms provisional theories and waits for time or fuller knowledge to explode them. A bad habit, Mr. Ferguson, but human nature is weak. Sherlock ….

In shape they were like horrible toads, and moved in a succession of springs, but in size they were of an incredible bulk, larger than the largest el….

"I should have more faith," he said; "I ought to know by this time that when a fact appears opposed to a long train of deductions it invariably prove….

I could not rest, Watson, I could not sit quiet in my chair, if I thought that such a man as Professor Moriarty were walking the streets of London un….

Anything seems commonplace, once explained..

So tomorrow we disappear into the unknown. This account I am transmitting down the river by canoe, and it may be our last word to those who are inter….

That which is clearly known hath less terror than that which is but hinted at and guessed..

The chief proof of man's real greatness lies in his perception of his own smallness..

It is not my intention to be fulsome, but I confess that I covet your skull..

It is decreed by a merciful Nature that the human brain cannot think of two things simultaneously . . ..

It is not that I think or believe, but that I know..

My name is Sherlock Holmes. It is my business to know what other people do not know..

To his eyes all seemed beautiful, but to me a tinge of melancholy lay upon the countryside, which bore so clearly the mark of the waning year, Yellow….

It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data..

If I had never touched Holmes, who has tended to obscure my higher work, my position in literature would at the present moment be a more commanding o….

When a doctor does go wrong he is the first of criminals. He has nerve and he has knowledge..

There was something awesome in the thought of the solitary mortal standing by the open window and summoning in from the gloom outside the spirits of ….

Some people's affability is more deadly than the violence of coarser souls..

My mind rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram, or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my ow….

Let us hear the suspicions. I will look after the proofs..

Still, it is an error to argue in front of your data. You find yourself insensibly twisting them round to fit your theories..